1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a communication method, and more particularly to a high speed facsimile communication system capable of decreasing the time required for communication.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Recently, with development of advanced equipment for office automation, there has arisen a demand for increasing the information transmission speed of a facsimile communication system, or the like. In the field of the facsimile equipment, various approaches have been made for speeding up the data transmitting operation of a modem by improving the data encoding scheme so that the rate of data compression can be increased.
In this connection, the control procedure of the facsimile has heretofore been executed so as to comply with the CCITT T30 Standards. In that case, it takes about 13 seconds from connection to the transmission line to start of actual data transmission.
On the other hand, the time required for transmission of data of an amount normally included in a document of A4 size, for example, is decreased from about 20 seconds to about 10 seconds as a result of improvement of the encoding scheme and the speeding-up of transmission as mentioned above. In otherwords, the total time required for sending a sheet of document of A4 size through the facsimile communication system is reduced to about 23 seconds, wherein about 50% thereof will be consumed for executing the control procedure. Thus the time required for the control procedure is relatively long as compared with the net time taken for the actual data transmission which is the intrinsic function of the facsimile system. This means that the reduction of total transmission time is not large even though the net time taken for actual transmission of image data or information is considerably reduced, because of a relatively long time required for the execution of the control procedure.
Parenthetically, it should be mentioned that the control procedure for the high-speed G3 facsimile system is described in detail in the CCITT T30 Standards.